


The Way They Shine

by HarveyMcScorpius



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: (slice of life?), F/M, Movie Descriptions, Snippets, embellishment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 07:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13631301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyMcScorpius/pseuds/HarveyMcScorpius
Summary: In anguish and reassurance and lust and death, they shine.





	1. In Anguish

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, here it is. My magnum opus as far as The Shape Of Water goes. First fanfic for the movie that I wrote. A few scenes from the movie with some slight embellishment. I noticed that characters in Shape pretty much all wear their emotions on their faces. This results in a particular character's face glowing. Most of it is the radiant Sally Hawkins :). Just an interesting theme I wrote for. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> -Harvey McScorpius

_ In anguish . . . _

****

"It's the loneliest thing you've ever seen? Well, there you go! You just said it right there! It's a thing, it's a freak!"

Giles starts to push past her, stone in his heart. He considered himself a good man, a contributing friend. He's done things for her that have threatened him more wholly than he'd like to remember. He's risked his livelihood, his dignity, his  _ secret _ for her. And she, in turn, had given him her. Her friendship, her trust and amicability. It wasn't much, but what good she did put in the world found a great deal of itself in Giles

However he's incredulous at her request. Here he is, in his quaint apartment above the Orpheum, standing in the door to the hallway, his second beginning, his stepping stone to escape the poverty that both of them had waded through their whole lives. Was it so impossible for her to be happy for him? Didn't she understand?

And as she steps in front of him, her thin little ghost of a body all that keeps Giles from leaving, he sees the bloody and immortal grief in her eyes and regrets himself.

_ You're not understanding me. _

"I understand what you're-", Giles begins. He'd attempted to push his tall, narrow figure past her, but that same thin little ghost grips his collar and flings him back into the room. She is desperate, maddened with animalistic terror. It grows in her eyes as she slaps at his torso, keeping him in. Giles barely feels it through the heavy coat, but the rage behind it roots him. She's never been this way. ****  
** **

"You stop it-" he stutters through all of this. "I don't know what's gotten into you - you _hit_ me!"Indignation floods Giles' being and he removes her hands from him, flattening his coat like a preening bird. "You _hit me_!" he repeats, still shocked at the fury that pours from her. ** **  
****

She signs angrily, like swipes of a cutlass. Her hands hammer into each other as she forms the words. ****  
** **

_ Say what I sign. Look. _ ****  
** **

"I'm looking," Giles repeats. Not satisfied she grabs him again. Harder and more resolutely he brushes her away. "I'm looking!" ** **  
****

Her mouth, silent forevermore, opens as her minds races and he swears he can hear her heart thump wildly. Giles sees her eyes glisten and close, as if the feelings inside her are too much, too mighty for her fragile mortal frame. In an instant, all of that emotion is on her face and she begins to sign. 

_ What am I? _ ****  
** **

"What am I?" ** **  
****

_ I move my mouth - like him. _ ****  
** **

"I move my mouth - like him." ** **  
****

_ I make no sound - like him. _ ****  
** **

"I make no sound - like him." ** **  
****

_ What does that make me? _ ****  
** **

"What does that make me?" ** **  
****

_ All that I am, all that I've ever been, brought me here - to him.  _ ****  
** **

"All that I am, all that I've ever been, brought me here - to him." ** **  
****

She looks him in the eyes as she finishes. Her own are red rimmed, glassy, shredding hurt glazing over them as she burns right into his soul. He shakes his head and sighs, exasperated. "See, you said him. There's a  _ him _ now?" Giles finds his eyes wandering to his watch. ****  
** **

She focuses all that she has into her hands as she pushes him again, pulling herself up by his coat and is less than six inches from his face. Now she is imperious, a storm behind her eyes as soundless threats fly in the space between them.  ****  
** **

"Watch it!" Giles says, and she remembers herself for a moment, letting go of him and taking a few steps back. Unleashing more of the torrent inside her, her hands blur after she again, commands him to repeat her. ** **  
****

_ When he looks at me - _ ****  
** **

"When he looks at me . . ." ** **  
****

She starts again. The rhythm of her hands loses its candor for a moment, but the track is reset. When Giles again sees her release the avalanche of fear and concern and hope she contains within her . . . ****  
** **

Her face lights up.  ****  
** **

_ The way he looks at me - _ ****  
** **

"The _way_ he looks at me . . ." ** **  
****

_ He doesn't know - _ ****  
** **

"He doesn't know . . ." ** **  
****

_ What I lack. _ ****  
** **

"What I lack . . ." ** **  
****

_ Or -  _ ****  
** **

"Or . . ." ** **  
****

_ How I am incomplete. _ ****  
** **

"How I am incomplete." ** **  
****

_ He sees me for what I am - _ ****  
** **

"He sees me for what I am . . ." ** **  
****

_ As I am. _ ****  
** **

"As I am." ** **  
****

_ He's happy - _ ****  
** **

"He's happy . . ." ** **  
****

_ To see me.  _ ****  
** **

"To see me." As he repeats the line, she almost ceases signing for the pure euphoria on her face. Every line and crease in her face glows with it, and she's as radiant as the sun. Giles sees thoughts of this mysterious being playing in her head. Years of being one of her only confidants have made him aware of subtle things that give away the wills of her heart. The way her eyes disappeared and her lips formed as she smiled betray her adoration for this thing. Giles finds that she almost convinces him, nearly shatters the stone in his chest. ** **  
****

_ Every time.  _ ****  
** **

"Every time." ** **  
****

_ Every day. _ ****  
** **

"Every day." ** **  
****

_ And now - _ ****  
** **

"And now . . ." ** **  
****

_ I can either - _ ****  
** **

"I can either . . . " ** **  
****

The light in her face dies. Shining pinpricks like mournful stars form at the corners of her eyes. It is good that she speaks with her hands, or her sobs would choke out all else. ****  
** **

_ Save him - _

"Save him . . ."

_ Or let him die. _

"Or let him die."

And though doing it cracks that stone in his heart and splinters it into his spirit, Giles can't. He is old, and she is young. He knows the double-edged sword that life is. She's idealizing, trapped in a fantasy. Red, wooden doors form in Giles' mind, and he remembers what's at stake. He is _not_ going to sacrifice any more for her.  "I am leaving," he says and he pushes past her. She holds him in the doorway. "I have to go-- this is very important to me; this is a _second_ _chance_ for me. And when I get back," he keeps talking through her pounding on his chest, her silent screams of rage and terror, those stars in her eyes flowing out of her. His heart breaks for her, every second he looks at her, but so too grows his fury. "We just will not talk about this-" ** **  
****

She signs at him, shaking, incoherent, fractured, desperate sentences slung at him. Giles cannot take it for another second. ****  
** **

"What are we?! What are you and I? Do you know, do you know what we are?"He yells at her, her resolve gone and she flinches at the volume and power of his voice. Just as he had been, at the anger in her hands. "Nothing! We're nothing! We can do nothing! And I am sorry, but-"The tide of red wrath in his brain scrambles it, and he fumbles for words. ** **  
****

"God . . . it's not even human." ****  
** **

And out of the room he goes, to the red doors at the ended of the dilapidated hallway. Giles hears uneven shoes clicking on the carpet behind him, but he drowns them out. He thinks of anything, of Bernie's congratulations for his artwork, the steady paychecks from Klein and Saunders waiting for him, the jawline and blue eyes of the man at Dixie Doug's- ****  
** **

One pound on the wall. He knows what it is, and wages a moments-long siege with himself to  _ turn around _ . Giles stops, the future waiting for him out that scarlet portal frozen in time, and he turns around.

"What?"

She is a ghost. A trembling, tear-streaked revenant stands before him, her legs shaking in anguish and ferocity. Her eyes are aglow with reflections from the antiquated light fixtures about them. Slowly, terribly, as her face contorts, she brings herself to sign.  ****

_ If we do nothing, neither are we. _

**** Giles is gone. All that clouds his mind is what he's just killed in his best friend, in her. And whether or not he will ever again see her face light up.


	2. In Reassurance

_In assurance . . ._

 

He hunts his way down. This strange forest is grey, grey and black and every other unattractive hue that make his long tongue stick out in disgust. The trees here are tall, square. They bear no fruit, and they are hard to climb. Some of them have strange, hexagonal branches that he can scale, but even if they do he finds nothing but flat, cold soil on top of them. It is this that has caused him to go down. There are other branches that, through some divine coincidence, give him perfect stepping spots back down to the ground. One of the trees is better lit, a great square moon with black scribbles across it nearly blinding him. His deep, wide, gold eyes squint as he looked at it. He had not seen the moon in a while, but he did not remember it being so close, or that shape.

This strange new thing has portals within it, odd openings like those in the dens above. Of _E-L-I-S-A_ , of _G-I-L-E-S_. They are like gashes in the smooth, grey wood, and appear and disappear. He pressed a webbed, bloody hand to the trunk of the tree as he passed into it.

He hadn't meant to run, truly. The smaller thing, the furry prey that he had found in the den of _G-I-L-E-S_ . . . He regretted eating it. It had been innocent, merely mewing. After he had set upon it with clefting teeth and razor claws, _G-I-L-E-S_ had awoken from his slumber. He had gone farther than he'd meant to, devouring it. The old man had caught him, the head of the furry thing in his belly and its blood caking his strong chin.  
  
He realized what he'd done, tried to apologize. _G-I-L-E-S_ would not hear him if he spoke with his mouth. Their tongues were different. His was long and unwieldy, prehensile, and could not make the same music that they did. So, wracking his brain, he had thought back to _E-L-I-S-A_ , to the strange and swift hand sounds she made. Her friend understood her when she used them, did he not?  
  
But, try as he might, he could not recall the symbols she made. His hands, so useful in rending the flesh of the poor pet of _G-I-L-E-S_ , were too large and clumsy to make the sentences, the syllables he needed. All he tasted was the iron nectar of blood in his mouth, all he heard was the sputtering and exclamation of _G-I-L-E-S_ over the death of the thing. So much red was slathered across his palms . . .  
  
A vision claws into his brain. Whether it is a memory of torment or some long-buried eldritch nightmare he cannot say. The taller human, the one from the strange grey and green caves where he had been tortured, struts before him, poised like a starving jaguar; he wishes that was the human's only motivation, for based hunger he could forgive. The black-hearted delight in agony that his tormentor took, he could not. That one's eyes held no life within them, and oh so often the human breathed a sweet, sickly cloud into his face that made his gills shiver. That same human's weapon, a club that sent lightning up and down his body, cylinder of pure power that spilled his blood and courage across cold grey soil floors. . . he could almost feel the sinister, white-hot teeth of the bludgeon entering him; burning him out. The thought invades him like petroleum in water.  
  
And so, he had run. Far from _G-I-L-E-S_ , far from the slaughtered furry thing. Out of their scratched and earthy dens and into the foreign and square jungle.  
  
Now he is far into the tree. The portals that vanish and reappear are long behind him. He has never, ever known a tree this large. The interior is gargantuan! It would take five of his long, scaly bodies to reach the top of the chamber, and nearly ten of him could stand, side by side, across it. This is no normal tree, he observes.

In the center of the wall opposite him, something rectangular flashes bright and multicolored. It is gargantuan and faces of humans in all sorts of skins move and speak across the space. He finds he cannot name their attire or words, and suspects that _E-L-I-S-A_ has yet to tutor the hand sounds for them into his repertoire. He cannot make the same graceful, humming, and practical sounds that they can. He, with his gold and green and blue, is certainly not as beautiful as they are. He is also quite sure that they do not eat their friends' furry things.  
  
All the same, it is beautiful, and he does not think to sit in the long rows of odd stumps for his captivation.  
  
He stands for what feels to him like whole eternities, silent and devout before this rainbow, shifting god. Soon, thoughts of the dead furry thing, of the anger of _G-I-L-E-S_ , of the gleeful human and his club of pain, are all gone. The blood on his chin is forgotten. It is as far from his thoughts as is his own blood, loosed in those dark and sterile caves for so long. Only a short while passes before his mind is filled with primal wonderings. It perplexes him. What terrific magic could the people of _E-L-I-S-A_ wield to forge a sunburst so grand as this? 

Like a paragon, full of answers and bliss, there she is.  
  
_E-L-I-S-A_ .  
  
He begins to tremble, afraid she will scold him for killing the furry thing. Will he be able to make her same hand sounds, now that she is there to help him? His smooth, cool face twists. Those golden, bottomless eyes of his reflect fear and guilt. He trills and gulps and makes what sound he can, trying to voice his apology. Standing there, with her beautiful, radiant face alight in this strange tree . . .  
  
His hands form the words. His eyes close for a moment, first and second eyelids concealing them. They seal in concentration, and he feels the hand sounds of _E-L-I-S-A_ , forming in his own clawed fingers.  
  
_Did . . . not . . . mean . . . eat . . . will wait . . . for . . . egg . . . next . . . ti . . . ti . . ._ He curses himself for forgetting, and severing the word. He remembered the concept behind it; It had been drilled into him by the tall corpse-man, with the stick. Every small instance . . . _second_ , _E-L-I-S-A_  had taught him, had been painfully realized in the sterile places he had been contained in. Once his message is complete, he opens his eyes and gazes at her, a film of culpability covering them. ****  
** **

_Time,_ she signs.

_E-L-I-S-A_?

She pats his armored pectoral lightly, affectionately. He too, eels his least-bloody hand onto her collarbone. The soft, agendaless, rare tempo of her heart calms him, and they stand there in the theater, experiencing each other. Blue diffuses under his scales like sparks.  
  
Her face lights up.  
  
She nods, smiling with her beautiful scarlet lips and glittering teeth, and looks deep into his eyes. Content. Reassuring. He takes her hand in his on his chest and coos. The pair travel back up those stepping branches, back to her den and that of _G-I-L-E-S_ . _E-L-I-S-A_ lays him back in her small lake, that filled according to her will and was contained with white shores. When she goes, his primordial, venerable mind stirs in his sleep, and all that dwells in it are effigies of her face, lit up.


	3. In Lust

_ In lust . . . _

****

The water washes over the floor entirely, and they are lashed to each other. ****  
** **

Together, they are a force of nature. In him, there dwells the primal instinct of an ancient force, torn between two world and two minds. In her, there lives the infinite, ravenous desire of a woman in love. They stand in the bathroom, their toes touching as the water crawls higher and higher up their skin. She turned up the heat, high, and the steaming liquid is scalding her skin. Even as the prickling sting spreads, she does not care. The enveloping, not-quite-pain that had reached her calves sang her into bliss. She clung to him tighter, silently making her pleasure vocal when she involuntarily opens her mouth. ****  
** **

She has taught him to make love differently than he learned. As a being wholly unplural in every river and every ocean, he'd resorted to observing, from water or tree, as her kind made love. Curiosity had enveloped him, and now that same urged was satisfied a thousand times over. He finds that her wiles, her mysterious lip touchings and neck bites, the pokes and prods and flicks and squeezes are titillating. They draw out his lust, making it grow and multiply before she finally presents herself to him. In such awe of her human processes, he allows her to decide when and where he takes her. He kneels, in a way, to this little alabaster goddess who makes him feel bliss in more ways than one. ****  
** **

They are pressed together. Olive-hued scales, like plate armor, press against smooth, supple cream-colored skin. Her breasts and stomach mash against his chest as she wraps her arms around him. They surround him from under his own arms, so her hands do not chafe against the sensitive tissue of his gills. She runs her hands from the carapace of his shoulders down the bladed line of his dorsal spines, across every groove and divot in his vivid skin to his backside. He notes that she seems to have a fascination with it that confuses him. Something burns in his cheeks as she squeezes there; she notices, her eyes fiery. Were he more cognizant, less aroused, perhaps he'd sign a question about it to her. For now, both of his large, moist hands rest on her hips. It is a neutral position he believes takes no liberties, and the gentle but wide curve is delicious in his hands. ****  
** **

She shakes and shivers when she touches him, as if she is feverish. She strains to trail her hands over every inch of him. Those instruments she so often used for communication with the outside world now cannot convey even to him the emotion, the  _ heat _ . Perhaps they never could. Perhaps nothing but pure physical expression can; Motion of the same vein as her hands, studying and mapping ever contour of his chitinous countenance. ****  
** **

And then she kisses him. Desperately, pulling him down to her height and pressing her lips to his scarred ones as she trembles. As with many times before, he is unprepared and unaccustomed to such contact. What was her way? His memory could not recall the motion she did, nor the undetectable pressures she used to unleash her love of him from her body. Six more times her lips join with his. It is as if she kisses him for fear of death. As if she will burst into flames and burn down to cinders if she does not kiss him. She cannot bear the fire within her, and so she takes a bit of the liquid he so divinely embodies to quench it.

She pulls her mouth away from his, hanging her head on his shoulder to the tune of rushing water. She chokes on a dry sob, and bites down gently on his shoulder to keep from crying. It is as if his presence creates earthquakes in her, no matter how warm the room becomes or how comforting his amphibian arms are. She cannot stop trembling. A clawed finger pulls her chin up, and she finds herself peering through her rounded raven hair up at him. His eyes are huge, dinner plates of gold and black galaxies, and he peers at his soft love, inquisitive. Hands leaving her chin and hip, he signs at her. ****  
** **

_ E-L-I-S-A, okay? _

She smiles at him, though her raw emotion still threatens to overwhelm her. 

_ I love you. _

And then he looks down. The water supplemented from the sink and the bath has reached their waists. He looks down, past the swell of her breasts and her slit, into the clarity of the liquid. 

His face lights up.

All of his body dances with electric blue currents blazing under his skin. It is as if he has a star within him and holes were poked in his scaly hide, allowing the inner, azure brilliance to show through. His gills ripple. With adamancy, he runs his smooth hand across the surface of the water. A deep rumble resonates through him. It is baritone and powerful and contented. Fins on the side of his face, like an emperor's headdress, ruffle as his whole body shakes for a moment. 

Soon he signs to his naked lover, excitedly, like an incensed child.

_ Water, E-L-I-S-A! Water, water, water, water! So . . . much . . . water! _

She nods, smiling at him, her eyes crinkling in amusement.

_Home!_ he signs. 

And then she kisses him, long and sensual and intimate and tender.

He does his best, partially taking her narrow lips in his full ones. She thinks it's just fine.

The room fills, and as they trace and visualize and pleasure each other, he almost forgets he is in this strange, grey jungle. In a stupor, the realm they dwell in almost seems like home. Brown and black river silt swirls around him, weeds and moss blanketing the sink and the bathtub as he presses inside her. The longer he pumps into her, the greater and faster the river rushes. Up and out the water pushes, flowering. Like typhoons, they both explode into godhood. After the storm is over, he holds her tight. Both their hearts are full of blue, sunny skies now.

He crooks his head into her neck. A sound comparable to a sigh ebbs from the chasms of his lungs. Sapphire flames inside him grow brighter and a deeper shade of blue, as if just being near her saturates his whole being. They embrace again, having drawn closer in flesh and spirit.

And that's how  _ G-I-L-E-S  _ finds them, when he opens the door and a speedy, rushing tidal wave of bath and sink water flows out.

****

Giles closes the door.

Her face has lit up again.


	4. In Death

_In death . . ._

 

_Crack!_

His spines flex and extend, making a sound like a thousand curved whips. It radiates and the diameter increases as he gulps. The breath is as deep as the oceans he hails from, and all of the blood and phlegm that filled his gills from his time on land is gone. He gets to his feet. The golden spines all over his body return to their former glory, rippling and powerful again.

He returns once again, barred from that black door of oblivion for a while more.

Every muscle, every corded and tight ligament flexes as he stands. He is proud again. The endless and drumming rains saturate him and he glows. Lightning conducts under his scales, and each fiber of his being trembled with power. He glows again, more apricious this time, as he skims his daggered hand over his pectoral. The two bloody pores there, that had ripped the life from him, vanish. He rises to his full height, and all who behold him fear the God who holds the lightning within him.

Before him, standing in the drapes of rain a few feet away, is the human. The one with the club of pain who had taken such shameless delight in watching him suffer, who had stabbed into his scales and infected him with nothing but terrible fear. 

Now, it is the human who is scared. He has the fire in his hand, the same cold silver fire he had used to try and kill him.

To kill his mate. His _E-L-I-S-A._

His clefted teeth bare under his lips as he stalks forward. He takes it slow, in a masculine gait carrying him forward to his enemy; carrying the human to his final destiny. 

He watches as the human stumbles. The sparks he uses to light his fire scatter all over the ground. They are a thousand white pellets against the black ground, and they glitter and flash in accordance with the driving rains and the flashing lightning. He struggles for a moment. The dark brown holes in his hand cause him to wince. A shadow falls over him, and he looks up into the wide eyes of a shelled, forest-colored titan.

"Fuck . . . you _are_ a god."

And finally, at long last, he buries his claws in the frail human's flesh. That wizened, pink mortal and his shell are easily rended by his claws. He cuts three red lines in the human's wrinkled throat and they gasp, both of them. One of them gulps for the red tide entering his lungs, and the other for the joy of vanquishing an ancient enemy.

The one with the pain stick falls to the ground, mortally wounded. His revenge is complete, and he turns on his heels in the storm.

He strides back across the glistening, cold ground, to _G-I-L-E-S_ ; to her limp and prostrate form, reduced to twitches and rasping, low breaths. The depiction angers him to the bottom of his soul, but he fights it down. This is not the end.

He squats, the fins on his legs folding to keep them from being damaged. He watches her for a moment, and then looks up at her friend. _G-I-L-E-S_ Â is bruised, a red and purple mark on his face. The aged man curses and groans, his old face streaked with those strange waters he had seen humans conjure. Lights fall upon them now. Forceful and overwhelming, they flood the scene, and he knows he must act quickly. A webbed appendage grips the shoulder of _G-I-L-E-S_ , and he croaks to the man.

_If . . ._

His finger taps his own scaled skin.

_Relic . . . then . . ._

He points a clawed digit at _G-I-L-E-S_.

_Treasure . . ._

And in an instant, as shouts mingle with the thunder and split the night, as more of those humans in their puffed skins arrive, carrying their silver fires . . .

He is gone, and she comes with him.

They are free now, and he is home. He kicks around in it, unbound and unleashed. He is a stroking, dancing deity, and he is _home._ It swirls all around him, so vast and beautiful that its mere shape is unperceivable. Its expanse, its boundless wonders and nightmares and things he had forgotten for so long humble him. It is home, and it is _everywhere._

But, one thing is still missing, and without her, nowhere is home.

She still ebbs, red twirling like smoke from her and out into the water. He gathers her up in his powerful arms, holding her there in the ceaseless tides. He keeps her near him, the various sounds she can never know coming from his mouth. He strokes her neck, prying gently at the three white lines in her flesh. If he can only coax them to open . . .

His lights awaken, and he kisses her. All of that fire she deposited within him, in his hardened animal's heart . . . he puts that and a thousand other gifts she gave him into that kiss ; into her. If only she will awake . . .

Her face lights up. 

_E-L-I-S-A_ _breathes._

The bottomless well of his home cycles through her, and out of her. The gashes at her throat have awoken, and ripple with the same power as his own gills do. He takes a great joy in that.

As her eyes open . . .

His face lights up.

She stares at him, her face bemused and serenely happy. She is here, and warm, and moving. In the arms of her great river god who returned her from the dead more than once.

Her own arms, wrapped in her heavy skin of scarlet she wore in the cold, wrap around him.

They float there, holding each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed my work! See you next time!


End file.
